How to check if remote branch exists on a given remote repository?

Question

I need to do a subtree merge for a specific branch, if it exists on a given remote repository. The problem is that the remote repository is not checked out locally, so I can

Answer 1

You can do something like this in the Bash terminal. Just replace the echos with the commands you want to execute.

if git ls-remote https://username:password@github.com/project-name/project-name.git | grep -sw "remote_branch_name" 2>&1>/dev/null; then echo "IT EXISTS..START MERGE" ; else echo "NOT FOUND" ; fi

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

$ git ls-remote --heads origin <branch> | wc -l

works most of the time.

But will not work if branch matches partially as below,

$ git branch -a
creative/dev
qa/dev

$ git ls-remote --heads origin dev | wc -l
2

Use

git ls-remote --heads origin <branch> | \
    cut -d$'\t' -f2 | \
    sed 's,refs/heads/,,' | \
    grep ^<branch>$ | wc -l

if you want a reliable way.

If you want to use in script and do not want to assume origin as default remote then

git ls-remote --heads $(git remote | head -1) "$branch" | \
    cut -d$'\t' -f2 | \
    sed 's,refs/heads/,,' | \
    grep ^"$branch"$ | wc -l

should work.

Note that git branch -a | grep ... is not reliable as it may be a while since the last fetch was run.

Answer 3

Another way you can use in the current folder if it is a git repo to run

git branch -a | egrep 'remotes/origin/${YOUR_BRANCH_NAME}$'

Answer 4

All of the answers here are Linux shell-specific, which doesn't help very much if you're in an environment that doesn't support those sort of operations - for example, Windows' command prompt.

Fortunately git ls-remote accepts an --exit-code argument that returns 0 or 2 depending on whether the branch exists or not, respectively. So:

git ls-remote --exit-code --heads origin <branch-that-exists-in-origin>

will return 0, and

git ls-remote --exit-code --heads origin <branch-that-only-exists-locally>

will return 2.

For PowerShell, you can simply use the built-in truthiness handling semantics:

if (git ls-remote --heads origin <branch-that-exists-in-origin>) { $true } else { $false }

yields $true, while:

if (git ls-remote --heads origin <branch-that-only-exists-locally>) { $true } else { $false }

yields $false.

Answer 5

$ git ls-remote --heads git@github.com:user/repo.git branch-name

In case branch-name is found you will get the following output:

b523c9000c4df1afbd8371324083fef218669108        refs/heads/branch-name

Otherwise no output will be sent.

So piping it to wc will give you 1 or 0:

$ git ls-remote --heads git@github.com:user/repo.git branch-name | wc -l

Alternatively you can set --exit-code flag on git ls-remote which will return exit code 2 in case no matching refs are found. This is the most idiomatic solution. The result can be checked directly in a shell test or by checking the status variable $?.

$ git ls-remote --exit-code --heads  git@github.com:user/repo.git branch-name

Answer 6

You can add the repository you have as a remote using git remote add something https://github.com/project-name/project-name.git and then do a git remote show something to get all information about the remote. This requires a network connection and is useful for human use.

Alternatively, do a git fetch something. This will fetch all branches on the remote called something and keep them in your local repository. You can then merge them into your local branch as you please. I recommend this path since if you finally decide that you have to merge, this is what you need to do.

OT: Your use of "checked out locally" indicates that you're approaching this from a centralised version control system standpoint. That's usually a dead end when you're dealing with git. It uses words like "checkout" etc. differently from how older systems did.